The Company

Energrow Inc., headquartered in Listowel, Ontario, Canada, manufactures the most advanced and reliable farm-scale oilseed pressing systems on the market that revolutionize how farmers approach feed costs.

The Company’s innovative solution allows farmers to take control of their feed production and optimize their operations by offering an easy and efficient way to make fresh,
home-grown, high-quality meal and expeller-pressed oil right on the farm. This helps farmers crush their feed costs while enhancing the health and productivity of their livestock.

To enhance its offerings, Energrow utilizes Unitronics’ Unistream PLC controllers for the main operation interface of its machines and UniCloud. The integration of UniCloud, a powerful no-code industrial IoT platform, has been instrumental in helping Energrow overcome various challenges and achieve its goals.

The Challenge

Since the Company’s customer base was spread across North America, a reliable and independent method to access the farmers’ machines remotely was needed.
Also, the local agents had to split their time between service and maintenance calls at the farmer’s locations, which could result in machine downtime.
Energrow was also looking for a way to communicate with its customers to understand actual machine issues in real time. Since some customers were less IT-inclined,
Energrow wanted to acquire a seamless plug & play solution to connect its customers’ machines to the Internet.

The main goals were to increase machine uptime with a centralized platform that would monitor the actual condition and production performance of the Energrow machines.
The Company also wanted to adopt a proactive preventive maintenance strategy to prevent machine downtime and maintain higher machine uptime and customer satisfaction.
The platform should also track machine conditions and have an automatic notification alerts system to notify farmers when they need to perform maintenance.

The Solution

With UniCloud, Energrow was able to meet its goals.

* UniCloud’s real-time data tracking and analytics, utilizing comprehensive dashboards, allowed Energrow to gain real-time insights into machine performance for optimization.
* The Company was now able to track production, monitor alarms, and generate reports to drive informed decision-making.
* UniCloud’s secure remote access capabilities allowed Energrow to monitor the actual conditions and production performance of machines from anywhere.
This eliminated the need for frequent on-site visits and reduced machine downtime significantly. This will, in turn, minimize unexpected downtime and collateral equipment damage, resulting in operating cost savings.
* The preventive maintenance functionality of UniCloud empowered Energrow to adopt a proactive maintenance strategy.
The IoT platform provided automatic notification alerts for scheduled maintenance.
* Apart from increased machine uptime and customer satisfaction, potential issues could be prevented before they caused significant disruptions.
Thanks to UniCloud, Energrow customers could track their production performance via the UniCloud Dashboards on their phones.
They also got automatic notification messages on Alarms as well as reports. They were also able to schedule necessary maintenance.

UniCloud’s plug-and-play functionality seamlessly connected Energrow’s machines to the platform, which simplified the installation process
for their less technology-inclined customers. This ensured a smooth transition and efficient utilization of all UniCloud’s features, such as real-time data collection, visibility, and analytics.

Results

With UniCloud, Energrow was able to overcome its challenges and meet its goals. Energrow improved customer support and satisfaction with faster response times.
By utilizing historical and online machine data, troubleshooting also became faster, and machine uptime increased significantly thanks to UniCloud’s secure remote access capabilities.

The proactive maintenance approach that Energrow adopted due to UniCloud enabled it and its customers to prevent machine failures,
which resulted in improved service quality and customer experience. By avoiding breakdowns, customers could allocate their resources more effectively.

Energrow’s use of UniCloud contributed to identifying areas for service improvement and facilitating economic calculations.
Apart from enhancing customer experience, UniCloud also contributed to strengthening Energrow’s relationship with its customers by providing them with valuable operational information.

“By embracing the capabilities of UniCloud, we have successfully overcome our challenges and achieved remarkable results. The machine uptime of our farmers increased,
resulting in uninterrupted production and higher efficiency. By remotely monitoring machine performance and receiving real-time notifications, we were able to address potential issues before they escalated, leading to increased service quality and customer satisfaction.
Our journey with UniCloud is a testament
to the positive impact of Industrial IoT technology on sustainable and cost-effective agricultural operations.”

Nicholas Leja, ‘Product Manager’ at Energrow